


Stark City

by Tonystarkisaslut



Series: Tumblr Prompts [112]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bethany cabe/Tony stark for like one second, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23885584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tonystarkisaslut/pseuds/Tonystarkisaslut
Summary: Based off of a text post that was a picture of a piece of IM1 script that never made it to the screen.Tony Stark builds Stark City for his father, but Howard never sees it.
Relationships: Howard Stark & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts & Tony Stark
Series: Tumblr Prompts [112]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1372033
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	Stark City

Tony puts his pencil down and grabs his drink, sipping once before switching again.

He stares at it. His little city. His stupid project that never meant anything. Not to who it was supposed to mean things to.

“What do you call it? This little mini-metropolis?” Benthany asks, walking into the living room.

Tony hides his surprise behind his scotch, setting it back down and going back to sketching.

His one night stands usually leave by this point.

“Stark City,” Tony says softly, continuing his sketching. “I built it when I was 14.”

“Your father must have been impressed,” she says, eyebrow quirked up. She goes over and looks at the model, seemingly impressed herself.

To be fair, it’s extremely well designed. Everything is to scale, designed to be economically efficient to construct, not to mention it features the arc reactor. Which,he didn’t know at the time, but was leading to a dead end and was going to be extremely _not_ cost efficient.

“He never came up to see it,” Tony says, ignoring the pitying look she gives him. He puts his sketch book back down; he just doesn’t think it’s worth looking into the arc reactor technology after all. It would be cool, sure, to have an entire city built to run on one, ecologically friendly device; but it’s too expensive to run and it doesn’t put out enough energy anyway. He shouldn’t have brought this back up.

“The irony is, I built it for him,” Tony says. He can’t help the chuckle that escapes; all of it is just so stupid now. He knows he never could have come up with something that would make his father think Tony was worth anything. “As an apology.”

Bethany looks confused now. “An apology for what?”

Tony smiles sadly at the stupid mess of a useless project. Just like him in his father’s eyes. “For living.”

Bethany is frozen, eyes wide and mouth agape.

Tony laughs, standing up. “Anyway, there’s a car waiting for you out front, and your clothes are hanging by the front door. You can see yourself out, right?”

“Tony-“

“I have work to do, and I already blew my free time trying to fix something that was never whole in the first place, so. Apologies for wasting our goodbye times.”

“But, I-“

“Goodbye Bethany, thanks for the good night.”

~

Tony smiles proudly down at his work. Sure, it isn’t breaking into the pentagons firewall (again) but it’s—it’s something!

And right in the middle is his dad’s arc reactor, powering the entire city.

He has all the math, all the costs, all the engineering and planning all writing on paper, but the diagram is the best.

It’s perfect. It’s perfectly to scale, it’s perfectly designed, and there aren’t any loopholes or anything that could make it go wrong.

Finally, something that will make his father proud of him. Something his father can show off without that slightly pinched look of annoyance he gets.

Finally, a reason for Tony to be alive.

He runs down the stairs, going into his father’s lab. “Hey, dad! I have-“

“Go away, Tony,” Howard says, taking a sip from his tumbler and looking over blueprints. “I’m not in the mood to deal with you.”

Tony winces, biting his lower lip. “But please sir, I have something for you to-“

Howard groans, rubbing his forehead. “What did I _just_ say, son? I said to leave me alone, because you’re annoying and I wish you would just go away and stay there. Away from me.”

Tony sets his jaw. “I’m sorry for being alive, then.”

Howard waves him off. “If you were sorry, you would have done something about it by now.”

Tony nods to himself, going back up stairs to his model.

How silly, Tony was, to think he could ever earn his right to be alive in his father’s eyes.

~

“Mr. Stark?”

Tony grunts his acknowledgment, not taking his head or hands out of the engine he’s working on.

“What did you want me to do with Stark City?”

Tony pauses for a fraction of a second. “Kill it. I’ve got no use for it.”

“Yes, Mr. Stark. You leave for your award ceremony tonight, sir. Mr. Rhodes is presenting it.”

Tony sighs and pulls out of his car. “Well, if my honey bear is presenting, I gotta show up, don’t I Ms. Potts?”


End file.
